


Sleep is the same wherever you do it

by anonissue



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, Karen is Red Room, Non-Graphic Violence, Second Person, because Karen as a spy makes wonderful fantastic absolute sense OK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:25:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3928015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonissue/pseuds/anonissue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't understand why they teach you Western philosophy like it's something worth believing in. It seems like sedition. It seems -- it seems human and fair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep is the same wherever you do it

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://an0nissue.tumblr.com/), come drop me a line.
> 
> Title from "The Bath" by Ray Carver. This is a kinkmeme fill, but a super teeny-eentsy-weentsy fill because this kind of awesomeness can only be contained inside of twenty million chapter epic which would require crying and a fuck-ton of Nutella and I'm not sure I'd survive fleshing something like this out OK, so this is more like the cake-pop version of something that should be an effusive wedding cake that I produced more or less to say thank you to the OP!anon for the genius of this prompt. Hope y'all get something out of it too.

_Breathe._

It's not now, it's 1961 and you're watching the priest, the only man who offered take in you -- still newborn at the time -- and your mother, get dragged out into a back-alley of Svetlanskaya Street. There are five men; they're not wearing uniforms. They each have a club in their hand, and they're leering at Father Kirilov.

You watch as they make him strip naked in the February cold. You watch as they shove the black fabric of his kamilavka between his teeth. You watch him make no sound, even as they beat him raw and bloody.

There's just you watching the men, and the snowflakes softly falling, watching you.

Your mother doesn't help you drag him inside again when they're done with him, she's too drunk. You feel like crying, and the impossibility of your twelve-year-old body moving his adult mass is overwhelming. But you manage. You get him back inside, to where it's warmer. You don't realize he's stopped breathing until morning.

The church closes a week after that.

_Smile._

It's a man and woman that come, and they come while you're not home. You're out helping a few boys rip off the farmers that come through the Sportivnaya, moving quick on your feet, culling sheep with your smiles. While you're gone, they offer your mother money, to let them take you for a week to audition for some ballet school in Moscow.

She takes the money, it's never a choice for her.

You're long past your final dance recital now, long past your graduation ceremonies, and you still can't find it in your heart to forgive her for it.

_Crack when you should, spill open, reform around their basest fears. Eyes of steel, and swift hands doing the good work of the people._

They do things to you. And it's not the horrible things that bother you, honestly, it's the kind things. It doesn't make sense to you that they let you socialize with the other girls. It doesn't make sense to you that there are rewards, extra time with the books, extra time with the piano if you perform well during the combat exercises.

You don't understand why they teach you Western philosophy like it's something worth believing in. It seems like sedition. It seems -- it seems human and fair.

You're a tool, that's made clear when the first year goes by, and at the end of it they put you in a cage with three other girls. Anyone leaving without the key in their hands will meet instant death by way of the NKVD flunkies surrounding the metal bars with Kalashnikovs in their hands.

There's one you can't put down, she wears a saint's medallion exactly like the ones Kirilov used to sell. You leave her a knife as a kindness, and she stabs you with it the second you walk out the cage. You manage to shove her in front of you, and they shoot her to death, not you, because you still have the iron turn-key clutched hard in your left hand.

They almost expel you for that, but since there are only seven of you left, they let you stay so as not to sour their investment. Living through the knife to your side is punishment enough.

_Vulnerability is a weapon, it's your weapon, it's yours._

It's years later, and you've received a message at your DC drop-point to go to New York.

You watch the news reports in LaGuardia as you try and figure out how many days you have left on the most recent drop of petty cash before finding expendable employment of some kind will become necessary. On the television screens, in surround sound, is the death of the capitalist's front line defense -- SHIELD is burning and the ants are scattering, and the irrepressible chord of irony that neo-Fascism found a home in the heart of the free makes you smile honestly for the first time in years.

You have 14 days until you can no longer budget for a hotel, you can extend it to 30 if you use hostels and squat where you can. There'd been no more information from Central as to what you're expected to do here, and with all that's going on in terms of counter-intel and chatter now, you wouldn't be surprised at all if there are some dark months ahead before the hand of guidance deigns to deliver you a package once more.

Months, in reality, are years. You get a job at Union Allied -- it's easy, secretarial work for the accounts department. You find flaws, since that's what you're trained to do, and you sell them to whomever's buying.

You do OK. You almost think it might be worth starting a life. Maybe even learning how to be around other, actual, human beings again. You go see a movie -- it's an Iranian vampire love-story, shot in black and white. Knowing how the monster feels makes you uncomfortable, even as you feel a vicious sense of righteousness when she kills the boy's father -- after he forces heroin on the prostitute he's spending the night with.

It makes you think of other injections, and pain. You duck out the side of the aisle and make it to the bathroom before you have to vomit, but your pelvis feels tender for hours afterwards and your stomach swims in sour bile. It's psychosomatic, you know this.

It doesn't make it any better.

You stay away from movies for a while after that. Everything is fine, if boring, until you come across a file you can't seem to sell. Every contact you've made in the city shrivels up at the sight of it, and there's a woman's voice, your prepodsha, whispering urgently in your ear telling you everything is about to go straight to hell.

_It's all you have left._

You wonder how transparent you are to Matt Murdock. You don't wonder how transparent you are to Foggy Nelson.

You remember that lying about the smaller things can make you innocent of the bigger things, if you time things right. And there are smaller movements, fleeting muscle contractions, slight changes in trajectory, the way he steps with his feet and moves down the street, but you know when speaking to Matt Murdock that you're not the only liar in the room.

This, oddly -- unforgivably -- makes you like him.

You almost feel like you don't need to play the game with him, to become his dancing partner, to shroud and deflect and obfuscate, but habits die hard.

It's after they clear your name, after they offer you a new job, after you feel bad and out of place, like maybe you're not quite good or right enough to be there between them, that -- like an old song playing on the radio -- someone leaves you a message on your window at night.

It's a drop point, and at the drop point, is a file folder. An intel-package. And most importantly, a name.

**Wesley, James**

You laugh, freely, and don't mind when the humid night sky muffles it down to something barely above a whisper.

**Author's Note:**

> Kink prompt: "Because there were 28 Red Room agents in the Black Widow program, right? Maybe that's how she knows how to fire a a gun."


End file.
